BIGVIZ for visualizing the Big Ideas. Two visual cartographers, created over 700 spontaneous sketches of the presenters’ ideas using Autodesk Sketchbook Pro software running on Wacom Cintiq tablets and rendered on a Perceptive Pixel multi-touch display.

Floodlit icons of civilization went dark Saturday for Earth Hour, a worldwide campaign to highlight the threat of climate change. WWF urged governments, businesses and households to turn back to candle power for at least 60 minutes starting at 8 p.m.

Semantic discovery is a way to find information without knowing explicitly what you’re looking for BUT “you know it when you see it.” Semantic discovery does not punish you for using the wrong keywords. This is the home of the TextWise SemanticHacker API.

Patrick Blanc overgrows the vertical surfaces of buildings in the most beautiful way. What he creates is far away from any fancy horticultural show, his Vertical Garden (le mur vegetal) could rather be called eco-art, or greener architecture.

If I have given you delight
By aught that I have done,
Let me lie quiet in that night
Which shall be yours anon:
And for that little, little span
The dead are borne in mind
Seek not to question other than
The books I leave behind.

In 1983, I was lucky enough to lead the team that turned one of his novels into a computer game, the first time science fiction authors had worked in that medium. His computer game ended up grossing more than most of his books ever did.

He really was a genius.

The most important thing you can take away: Naming things is important. He made magic things real by describing them and talking about them in ways that felt real. Once something feels real, making it real is a lot easier.

The phone I rang was answered by [him]. [He] echoed every single “hello” I made. The voice flippant with a hint of flagrant sardonic humour, sans the reeking sardine fragrance, complimentary of the proxy voice over the wire and wave. Not that [he] have one, at least not at that moment.

I’m in no mood to hear someone aping me, much less to have [him] picking up her phone. Never once [he] does that since I met her. Always the ever subservient porter of the magic voice box — as it rang, the perfunctory hand handed it over to her.

Perhaps it’s schadenfreude. Knowing well that I’m already reduced to a lesser subject of her affection.

No more the magus of amorous plague. Merely the pariah of delirious fugue.

Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello.

I throttled the aping sound with a silent touch of unceremonious disconnection.

I was hoping the droning white noise became a stimulus for [his] dutiful mind when it concern her mobile phone.

British science fiction writer Sir Arthur C Clarke has died in his adopted home of Sri Lanka at the age of 90. He served in the Royal Air Force during World War II, and foresaw the concept of communication satellites but never patented it.

If you don’t have a resume, what do you have? How about three extraordinary letters of recommendation from people the employer knows or respects? Or a sophisticated project they can see or touch? Or a reputation that precedes you? Or a great blog?

To many, the word “Shariah” conjures horrors of hands cut off, adulterers stoned and women oppressed. Without Shariah, there would have been no Haroun al-Rashid in Baghdad, no golden age of Muslim Spain, no reign of Suleiman the Magnificent in Istanbul.

“Coding is a form of self-expression”. Justin Frankel’s (Nullsoft) future encapsulates the debate over the future of the Internet itself. Does it become just a distribution system for corporate product or more of a way to subvert that corporate control?

The second edition of the Lifehacker book, Upgrade Your Life, is a compilation of the best 116 hacks and downloads from Lifehacker’s archives. This dead tree version of the web site transforms dozens of blog posts into comprehensive, edited tutorials.

Fantasy may help our sex lives by increasing desire and arousal; those who fantasize frequently also tend to have more sex. Fantasy can be a coping mechanism — a positive spin on a negative childhood memory. Or just to explore eroticism “in your head”.

Gary Gygax, a pioneer of the imagination who transported a fantasy realm of wizards, goblins and elves onto millions of kitchen tables around the world through the game he helped create, Dungeons & Dragons, died on March 5, 2008.

Gary Gygax co-created the game Dungeons & Dragons, and on that foundation of role-playing and polyhedral dice he constructed the social and intellectual structure of our world. We live in Gary Gygax’s world: fantasy, magic, superheroes and logarithm.

A camera that can “see” explosives, drugs and weapons hidden under clothing from 25 metres has been invented. The ThruVision system is based on so-called “terahertz”, or T-ray, technology, normally used by astronomers to study dying stars.